Mickey Mouse Pillow

When I attended the Long Beach International Quilt Festival with my two granddaughters last July, they were fascinated by an embroidery machine that was stitching an image of Minnie Mouse. The previous day, when we were not there, the demo embroidery sample had been Mickey Mouse and we got to take that sample home with us. It has about a 4" border on all four sides of Mickey before trimming. I promised the girls I would make Mickey into a pillow.

 

These embroidered images take literally hours to stitch completely. We had to leave before Minnie was finished but the girls were thrilled that we had Micky Mouse as a souvenir.

Based on the rectangular shape of Mickey Mouse, the pillow would be a non-standard shape. Even if I could, I would be unable to buy an appropriately sized pillow form. I had stowed away an old worn and and torn white bed sheet which I'd cut up, planning to use it as a base for a strip quilt. Cutting a piece of that sheet to the correct size, I used it and a bag of polyester stuffing to make my own pillow form. 

All the light blue swirls in the embroidered background fill reminded me I had the perfect fabric in my stash for the pillow backing. There was enough that I could make a generous ruffle all around as well. Since I thought it was unwise to deal with a zipper next to all that bulk of the ruffle, I made an overlapping envelope back instead.

The Mickey Mouse embroidered section measures 10½" wide by 15¾" and I added a 2⅜" wide ruffle all around. The pillow is very plump and, taking that into account, the pillow measures approximately 15" wide and 19" tall. I can't wait to give Mickey to the girls when they visit at Thanksgiving. Yes, they liked it!

Mini Pillows from Extra Blocks

While working on a community quilt with some of my quilty friends, I had two sets of a four block quad leftover from the quilt pattern Open Options by Material Girlfriends. I could have made one two-sided pillow but it would have been rather large. Instead, I had two pillow forms that were each approximately half the square size of a four block quad. By placing a form on the diagonal and folding the quad block corners in to the center I could make two mini-pillows. I would remove half of one block and insert a zipper in that seam, carefully, since it was a bias seam and could stretch. Then there would be an access side to insert the pillow form.

I spent WAY too much time on this supposedly quick project intended to use up extra blocks, spare pillow forms, and short zippers -- all items already in my stash. I will not blog about it in detail, especially since I took minimal photos of my goofs to illustrate this trivial pillow task. In summary these are the mistakes I made:

1. I thought I needed to add a strip to give more seam allowance and supply more fabric for overlap at the zipper. I did not. I wound up ripping it off.
2. I underestimated the seam allowance size needed to make the pillow cover fit the form snugly. I re-seamed three times going from ¼" to ½" to ¾" before saying this is good enough. It could have been tighter still, but I wanted to declare this "quick" project done!
3. I took the first zipper, the one in the aqua pillow, out twice and inserted it a third time due to the seam allowance change. You can guess how this warped that bias edge and how difficult it was to pick out stitches from the zipper tape. I had learned by the second grey pillow; I only inserted the 9" zipper once using the largest seam allowance.
4. I should not have used zippers at all and just stitched the opening closed. These pillows are small enough at under 11" to be just tossed in the wash as is, without removing the covers.

When completed though, I liked the diagonal block wrap idea and was pleased at the way the edges of the pillows look with contrasting triangles peeking out.

Those triangles peek out differently for the front and the back of each pillow.

I also liked the four patch block effect on the pillow corners.

I still think this is a cute idea for leftover blocks. Remember the old adage, "Measure twice, cut once"? I need a new adage. "Measure once to avoid sewing three times!"

House Pillowcases

My friend Kathie and I get together once a month to sew a project or try a new technique. In October I was going to demonstrate, and she was going to learn, the burrito method of making pillowcases. My 5/27/19 blog post has a brief tutorial on the sewing portion of how I make these. She made one pillowcase at my house with my fabric selections and me coaching her. I just love that house fabric! I waffled between orange and brown as the color for the accent strip and then decided the brown would bring out the tree trunks.

Kathie loved the magic of how these come out and liked the additional bonus of making French seams. She went home that night and made a pillowcase of her own, adding a touch of decorative stitching to the accent strip. I liked that idea and added some itty bitty decor on my accent band, also. I first tried to find the correct brown color thread in my stash but was unsuccessful, having only brown options that were too dark (almost black) and brown choices that were too light (almost beige). Necessity being the mother of invention, I found instead a bright green like the border and used it to make decorative leaves. I like the way the "foliage" echoes the trees.

A couple days later, I got out my fabrics again to make the complementary partner to the king size pillowcase we had made that day as a learning tool. I had assured Kathie that after she'd made a few pillowcases and the technique was no longer new, she could whip out a pillowcase in 20-30 minutes. Confident I knew what I was doing, I sewed my second pillowcase up in short order, being careful enough to reverse the polarity of the band side. Then I went to photograph the pair for my blog and ... whoops! They were different widths. So much for cocky self confidence. At least I discovered this faux pas before deploying them on the bed.

In my blog post for 5/11/19 I had stated cutting instruction for standard, queen, and king size pillowcases for directional and non-directional fabric. I quote here, highlighting where I had goofed. 

With directional fabric for a king size pillow (20" x 36"):
Cut the main body 41"along the grain x 37" slightly less than the WOF. The 41" wraps around the pillow with only one seam along the length. Main body needs 1¼ yards to accommodate the 41".

I had absent-mindedly left out the step of cutting the 37" width. No harm, no foul. I simply cut off the excess width from the completed pillowcase, leaving a ½" for the new French seam at the far end from the opening, and sewed the seam again.

Here is the finished pair of cases. They are folded for storage in my linen closet -- in half, and then thirds; but trust me, yes, the two pillowcases are indeed the same size now.

Bathing Beauties for My Husband

My husband and I were going into JOANN™ fabrics on a whim to look at their jigsaw puzzles. They have quite a selection in our Livermore store and we are hooked on buying and assembling them. As we walked in the door, there smack dab in front of us was their clearance rack of fabric. My husband immediately glommed onto a bathing beauty print. I will agree it was very striking and I did love the blue background. He loved other parts. I asked him if he wanted pillowcases out of it. He agreed that pillowcases would assure him sweet dreams.

I bought 2½ yards of fabric to make two king size cases. Because of the directionality of the print, 1¼ yards is needed to wrap around each pillowcase. The border and accent strip fabrics I would get from my stash. Even though none of the girls is wearing an Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, the fabric reminded me of that song and so I felt polka dots were an appropriate embellishment. Here is what my husband will see when he first opens his eyes in the morning.

Pair of Christmas Train Pillowcases

While I had the fabric combinations decided, I wanted to finish two more king-size pillowcases. The feature fabric was scenic with Christmassy red and green trains.  

I found the perfect pale blue to resemble swirling snow for the borders. For the accent red, I found a print with names from the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer TV classic special such as Clarisse, Hermey, Yukon Cornelius, The Bumble, etc.

I needed to take care that the borders were on opposite ends of the pillowcases so all trains were upright. They were, and "Voila", I have two more king size pillow cases.

I was not completely successful in my fabric reduction because here is what I have left. 

Train Fabric: 30" x WOF + twice 3" wide x 41"

Swirl Fabric: 17" x WOF

Red Accent: 7" x ½ WOF 

However, it will go in with my scraps rather than back on my Christmas shelf. 

Christmas Season Pillowcases

There are piles of Christmas fabric on the dedicated top shelve of my stash closet. Each piece was irresistible when I purchased it, yet they do not necessarily go together with each other for a quilt. I got the idea of clearing some space in the crammed shelf by making pillowcases from these fabrics. I made four pillowcases before before running out of time/steam but I also set aside fabric selected for another pair.

A good portion of these fabrics were a raffle prize from my guild's 2017 quilt show (post for 5/2/2017). The fabrics I won there were of a party lady theme and a nutcracker theme. The party ladies I paired with some of my polka dots. Seems to me partying and polka dots naturally go together – kinda like the bubbles in champagne. I gifted this pair of pillowcases.

I made two other individual pillowcases out of snowy winter scenes. The fun part is coordinating the accent and border fabric choices with the fabric for the main body. They are king sized and will be used seasonally in our master bedroom.

Ironically, winter scene fabrics still take up the same amount of shelf space but at least it will be space on a different shelf. The occupied shelf will be in the hall linen closet rather than in my sewing room closet. 

Operation Tea Towel

These bright yellow and bold graphics of this tea towel caught my eye. I made two pillows with four tea towels for both households of my grandchildren to give with the name sake game to match. For each pillow, all it took was two towels back to back, sewn on two long sides and the top, with a zipper between at the bottom. 

I did not take out the folded edges – just sewed through them. Instead of pinning the heavy fabric I used Clover Wonder Clips to hold the two towels in position while I stitched using a heavier 90/14 needle that was recommended for sturdy denims or other jean type fabrics. A standard size pillow fits inside. I have made a robot pillow previously from science museum tea towels and collected the tips in this 6/9/19 post. It is a fast, fun, and easy project.

I introduced my five year old granddaughter to the operation game during a visit last weekend. I was very impressed with her intense concentration and with the steadiness of her hand in removing the various body parts. She giggled a lot at the buzzing sound when she missed, so we had fun.

Masquerade Extras

The completion of Masquerade, a quilt in the making for nine years, was announced last month in my post for 10/16/20. You do not make a quilt from 173 hexagons, each from 6 equilateral triangles, without having some leftover triangles. What a shame to toss out those perfectly uniform shapes as scraps. I joined them together as far as they would go in quasi-random order to make one side of a pillow. I was not free-spirited enough to be totally random. Total randomness would have resulted in two triangles of the same color falling side by side somewhere, and I prohibited that from happening. 

I also had a narrow strip of the mask fabric left over. Not large enough to make a pillowcase but certainly adequate to add a focus band on a pillow. I flat fell seamed a blue band and a green band on either side of this mask piece. 

I joined the banded mask section to the pieced triangle section right sides together to create sort of wrap-around seams. The result was a tube size 21" x 13".  I sewed one short end closed and turned the unit right side out. A couple straight stitching lines an inch or so in from the long edges gave it two solid-color flanges.  This pillow was a quick, spontaneous, impromptu creation so I added no zipper nor Velcro nor overlapping flap. I stuffed it as is and machine sewed the remaining short edge closed. The result was this pillow. The following photos show front and back – or maybe back and front depending on your preference. 

But wait! I still had some half-equilateral triangles left over from the edges of the strips used to cut the full triangles. How could I waste those luscious colors and toss them in the trash? Granted they were small and showed the selvage printing, but that could be interesting, too. I sewed them together matching those with similar angle slants and leaving the selvage printing in place. Some were bigger than others but since they had all been cut from 3½" strips, they made several uniform width columns. If grouped judiciously, they could approach approximately equal heights. I had leftover piped, striped binding from the Masquerade quilt, so I tucked some in the seam at either end before adding orange vertical edge strips. After trimming, I added blue and green horizontal bands on the top and bottom as on the previous pillow. I sized the added blue and green strips such that this pillow also ended up at 21" x 13". Since these blue and green bands were narrower, I chose not to stitch them flat as flanges. They adjoined a swirly orange back in a continuous soft contour.

Again, I stuffed this pillow without much extra decorum or attention to future removal of the cover. If dirty, it can be tossed in the washer and dryer as is. Here is the front and back after stuffing to be plump, yet soft and squishy.

 

But wait! I still had two equilateral triangles and some more black and white striped binding. This was enough to make this little 9" square pillow. Depending on your screen size when you are reading this post, the image made be bigger than the pillow. Perhaps I should  call it a pillow-ette? 

The front fabric of the quilt was not all I had left over. I had 8 yards of the fabric to use for the backing of the king-size quilt. See my 9/16/20 post for the story behind the graphic blue backing fabric. There was a fair amount remaining, but not necessarily in the size configuration for a pair of king size pillowcases. But I am quilter! I can piece! Aha! I was careful to use flat fell seams so there would be no raw edges nor bumps where the sleeper might choose to lay his head. My resulting jigsaw puzzle ended up with an embedded mask band in the discontinuous backing fabric and a pillowcase border of black and white stripe binding fabric. The white accent band was from the same piping fabric as the quilt binding.

So here are the three pillows, a pillowcase, and a section of Masquerade folded back to expose the backing fabric. I had better be dark in my daughter's bedroom. This is a pretty wild combination of colors and shapes and patterns, not necessarily conducive to falling asleep.

The trio of scrap pillows is displayed on a small bench at the foot of my bed prior to my mailing them to my daughter. I am not sure where she will place them in her bedroom or if her 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son will make off with them.

Here is the entire collection: Masquerade quilt, two pillowcases, and three pillows. I have already shipped off all the components to Oklahoma as of this post. I am still six months before her 10th wedding anniversary next May.